We write our Erotic Romance stories to entertain, of course, but most of all we write them because we believe in happy endings for all who fall in love, whatever their gender, sexual orientation or numerical combination.

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Posts Tagged ‘baby boomers’

Want to stay vibrant, healthy, exciting and sexy across the life cycle?

Here’s what it takes:

Think differently.

Do something different.

Keep on doing it.

Not new, not earth shaking, not something I haven’t said in my own way, but I ran across it yesterday in a place I wouldn’t have looked for it.

I follow (and hardly ever miss reading) Bob Mayer’s blog – initially because I heard him speak with Jennifer Crusie and I read the books they wrote together, then because he was a pioneer in indie publishing, and because I started reading and love his solo fiction. Here’s a shout-out to Duty, Honor, Country and The Jefferson Allegiance. Great reads.

He’s a West Point graduate with a Special Forces career, and he draws on that experience to write his fiction and run his life. Truly. He’s been a traditionally published best-selling author, but he saw the wave of change coming and established an indie publishing house for his back list, his new releases, and a few additional brave authors. Lots of traditional authors got swamped by the wave – he’s still riding it, and thriving.

So when he says something, I pay attention.

The opening line to his blog yesterday was “If I’m not where I want to be, then I must change.” Exactly. How do we do that? We all have the same basic material to work with – think differently, do something different, keep on doing it. Not new. What was new (to me) was the meta-analysis: in order to make a change, it helps if we know which of these three steps is most difficult for us. Then we can focus our energy on figuring out why that step is our barrier, and doing something about that.

For me, #3 is the bugaboo: sustaining the change. My something different is my twelve minute morning workout. That means I have to do the same “different” thing every morning, and some mornings I just don’t feel like it.

I’ve learned I need a huge laundry list of reasons that can get me up off the couch and moving, a combination of sticks and carrots. Some mornings, frankly, it’s vanity. I really like looking trim and fit. Sometimes it’s my osteopenia – the fear of ending up someday in a nursing home with a broken hip. Often it’s the specter of Alzheimer’s – my gene pool is just loaded with good reasons to sustain the change. Right now I’m rehabbing an injured knee, and if nothing else gets me going, the knowledge that I’ll have less knee pain later in the day works just fine. Sometimes, even, it’s knowing that I’ll be writing this Stay Sexy blog post every week: accountability. And on a really good morning, it’s just knowing how very good I feel all day when I’ve started my day with the core routine.

I’ll close with his closing words. I highly recommend reading his entire post.

This morning I’ve been re-reading blogs on a list I keep for inspiration for this weekly column on staying vibrant, healthy, exciting and sexy across the life style. I needed that, because with the holidays and a horrific case of bronchitis hubs came down with Christmas day, my usually faithful routine flew out the window. I wasn’t finding the motivation inside myself to conquer it, so I turned to my virtual support network.

What she stumbled upon was the one activity that could entice her to put in the necessary hard work – the sport she used to do that gave her the feeling she remembered and wanted back. For her, it was water skiing.

Did I mention she’s at least seventy? It’s clear she has resources – once she identified what activity would inspire her to shed those pounds and get in shape, she was able to hire a specialized coach to see her through the process. But that’s not what I took from her blog, and it’s not what you need, either.

What she focused on was the remembered feeling of excitement, achievement, and vitality. Those feelings are stored in our very bones and muscles, and those memory traces can propel us towards our goal.

So here’s another quote – and my New Years wish for you, as you enter 2014:

“I love being able to tell people what I’m doing now, instead of what I used to do.”

And yes, I did my workout between reading the article and writing this column. Go, me!

I’m sure we’re playing right into Miley Cyrus’s hands – her interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show was seven days ago, and here we are still talking about it. That’s what she wants, so she’s succeeded.

She told him she’d heard things went downhill after forty, and that, being fifty-five, he definitely wasn’t “sexual.” Here’s a LINK to the six minute clip of their conversation, in case you missed it:

More power to her—she’s a successful, talented and focused artist.

At twenty.

Which is why we’re taking this on. Probably when I was twenty, I had no clue what people over forty or even older did with their sex lives, if I thought about it at all. But what I don’t want is kids in their twenties thinking it’ll be all over by the time they’re not even halfway through their allotted years. That’s a lot of empty years to be contemplating.

So here’s great news from the other end of the spectrum—just yesterday, we learned that TV star Suzanne Somers, sixty-six, has sex daily with her seventy-seven year old husband. Not just once, but twice a day! Here’s the LINK to that report.

The thing is, if we expect that sex will cease after forty, we can easily create a self fulfilling prophecy. Will things change, sexually? Is it true (as Miley said) that things tend to go downhill after forty? Of course. Our bodies change, our libido can morph in the wrong direction, our needs are different and our endurance might shift.

But if we liked sex in our twenties and thirties, there’s no reason to give it up, long past forty. Hubs and I, in our sixties, are still learning and trying out new things. And even though it might be TMI, I’m here to say that yes, we do something sexual together every day, and I, for one, am enjoying my body far more than when I was Miley’s age.

So Rock On, Suzanne Somers – and for all our readers out there, have fun, and Stay Sexy!

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